Entries Tagged 'Web 2.0' ↓

Made by Twittersheep, a new project made (in part) by my acquaintance Ted Roden, a creative technologist for New York Times Research & Development.

I just discovered DataPortability.org through Peter Van Garderen's blog post about it. I was entirely surprised that I'd heard nary a peep about it. Some basic examination (running a WHOIS query on the domain) shows that it's still a fairly new project. I have to say, though, that I'm entirely impressed. Those involved have given a whole lot of thought to how they're going to be doing things, as evidenced by those who have signed up to be involved and the DataPortability Charter. To wit, the Charter's principles tend to speak for themselves:

1. We want sovereignty over the profiles, relationships, content and media we create and maintain.
2. We want open formats, protocols and policies for identity discovery, data import, export and sync.
3. We want to protect user rights and privacy.

And, of course, the thing that made me squeal with delight like a pig in mud:

4. DataPortability will not inventing any new standards.

I mean, that's probably the best news that someone like me could get. They have a graphic on their home page that sums it all up perfectly:

Now, naturally they didn't have preservation in mind at first, but as Peter's post notes, it's ripe for that sort of use. This also got me thinking about Dan Chudnov's old brainstorm about blog mirroring using Bittorrent and Atom, too. In particular, note this comment of his:

It's a pretty simple idea: you extend an aggregator system to "archive" entries posted each day into bittorrent files, and then build a secondary system to turn the data distributed over bittorrents back into browseable "blog" mirrors if/when you need to. The best part is that you don't really need any new technology to do it.

I feel like things are coming full circle. I also feel like I could really have fun and find new ways to extend ArchivesBlogs, at least when I finish the other countless little projects that litter my mind. Anybody got some free time they want to contribute?

Many of Web 2.0's detractors argue about it's real value, but given the wildfires in Southern California, I was happy to see it really put to good use. KPBS, a San Diego radio station, has been using Flickr and, even more shocking (at least for some), Twitter as ways to disseminate information and news quickly. The use of Twitter is particularly interesting as it can send out SMS messages. You might recall a few years ago when protesters in the Philippines used SMS to organize political rallies and warn of police retaliation. The California State Library Blog also has provided information from the California State Archivist about archives affected by the fires. In addition, information about disaster recovery for libraries and archives is available both on a regional level by the San Diego/Imperial County Libraries Disaster Response Network and on the state level by the California Preservation Program. Please hold those affected by the fires in your thoughts, and if you can, contact SILDRN or the CPP to help.